Day 97 : Drywall installation, brushmowing

Our friend Jeff offered his help with brush mowing this last weekend. We spent a few hours mowing around all the rocks and other obstacles on the lower (meadow) part of our lot on Sunday. I got to drive his John Deere with its 7' mowing deck myself...

While lifting a rock, I found a little Eastern Gartersnake:

Meanwhile, the drywall installation has begun on the main floor. It looked quite chaotic right in the middle of installation. The rooms are getting smaller, but at least you gets better idea now how the layout will feel.

Master Bedroom

Living room

Day 67 : More porch details

Here are a few more photos of the porch from Saturday. With that truss design, we will have "cathedral ceilings" in that room. :-)

We will the porch from the kitchen/dining area and then there will be a door leading to the deck. It is just slightly bigger than our old porch and there is plenty of deck space left for our big round outdoor table that seats eight.

The crew also continued framing in the basement and started lowering the ceiling on the main floor as you can see here in the master bedroom. 

In addition, work has started on the plumbing side with the first pipes installed. There is also an electrical box now with two circuits. I am just not sure if power has been hooked up on the utility side of things yet.

Day 55 : Garage

Due to some weather-related delays, the crane for the lifting the roof trusses into place will be on site on Tuesday. Until then, the framing crew worked on the garage.

This is where the porch will be located

We met with the builder today at the site to (a) discover that the hobby room window has been repositioned and (b) to discuss the issue with the main floor ceiling height. There's no chance to change the exterior walls now, but he agreed to install a lowered ceiling (changing some interior walls to 8') with the cellulose insulation sitting right on top of the ceiling as before. The only drawback is that there is some extra lumber that goes into the design and that the house is 1' taller than necessary. This means that the exterior look is different. Still better than having to heat those extra 1200+ cubic feet!
  

Day 54 : Main floor exterior and interior walls

Well, technically this is the status as of day 52. We went on our annual canoe camping trip (last Thursday morning to Sunday), so we did not have the chance to check on Friday. Here's what happened: The fourth main floor wall is up now, plus most of the main floor interior walls. There are some additional walls in the lower floor as well. The crew is also getting ready for the main floor ceiling and roof trusses to be installed. I hope I can catch the crane lifting the trusses into place!

However, we also noticed that a window is not in the proper place and that the main floor ceiling height is not right. Will have to talk to the builder tomorrow to get a few things straightened out...

Approaching the house from the south, along our driveway

West wall installed!

Main floor interior framing

Dining and living room area

Dining room view!

Day 50 : Three out of four main floor walls are up

This crew is incredible... they worked from dawn today until past sunset. After a long day in the office, we only got up there around 8pm. The guys were still hard at work setting up the south wall.

Only the West wall still missing on the main floor

Master Bathroom corner of the house

From what I have been told, they may have installed the roof trusses by the time we come back from our weekend camping trip. I almost hope that this will not happen before Monday, so that I can watch the trusses being lifted onto the main floor joists.

At any rate, by the end of next week we may have something that looks like a real house!